On the heels of a monumental national election in which Americans decidedly voted to seize back their government and force it to be accountable to the citizenry, someone in the Kansas legislature has decided it’s another perfect time to try to pull the wool over the eyes of Sunflower State residents by restricting our advance notice when government plans to do something to us.

On Saturday I was walking laps in the gym at the Great Bend Recreation Commission Activity Center, where Heart of Kansas was hosting its annual Heart Walk for the American Heart Association. With Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” playing on the local classic rock station, we all picked up the pace.

In a time of budget-cuts and uncertainties, I think that we (as a society) should focus more on volunteerism. Government can serve many functions, but one thing it cannot replace is the friendly warmth of human-interactions connecting with each other. I have to say that volunteering need not be serving on a committee or service-organization (although those are nice). It can also include visiting your elderly shut-in relatives or even people we don’t know at health-care facilities. It can also include visiting inmates at jails. I know that may sound like a scary thing, but years ago when I was younger and healthier, I did both a Methodist prison-ministry and a Catholic prison-ministry to the infamous Leavenworth Penitentiary accompanying my good friend, the late Archbishop James Patrick Keleher, archbishop-emeritus of Kansas City, Kan., who recently died this past November 2024 at the age of 93. I admit, I did feel scared at first. I sat on the front pew in their prison chapel (something I rarely did in my own church). I observed how Archbishop Jim pleasantly mingled with the inmates. Some, you could tell were there just to get a “free-hour.” However, the archbishop told me to focus on the one or two men who sincerely wanted to visit and repent. That was a lesson of volunteerism in action.